My First Walk

Waking up at 03:30 in the bush is, although brutal, surprisingly easy, because as soon as your alarm wakes you up the noises from the bush just take over, and I’m finding it is pretty pointless to try and get back to sleep again. Luckily I was also still riding the high of seeing a leopard the night before. We set off around 04:00, still in the pitch dark, with Tara and Becky checking on a few of the camera traps set up on route to the starting point of our walk. There are two different 10km+ routes we have to walk around the reserve every few weeks: a mountain walk and a valley walk. This was the mountain walk, but starting at 05:30 meant we would be done before it got too hot (in theory).

The reason for these walks is to look for spoor (footprints) and scat (poo) of carnivores, and in particular leopards, along with checking on camera traps around the route. It’s fair to say I hadn’t really got my eye when it came to looking for the prints, but Tara and Becky are pretty damn good at spotting them, so we found quite a few.

Genet track

Leopard track

Towards the end of the walk the location of our camp was casually pointed out to me from afar; my jaw just dropped. It’s hard to get a sense of where you are when you’re down there, but it’s a pretty nice location…

We finally finished around 09:00, which was a relief for us all because it was already starting to really heat up. But we weren’t done for the day then: we proceeded to go on a long drive around the higher regions of the reserve checking on yet more camera traps. One of the cameras was located next to a small pool, so we stopped off to have a quick dip since by this point it was around midday and getting extremely hot!! The pool was located at the bottom of a very steep road, but it wasn't until half way up and our vehicle got well-and-truly stuck that I realised just how steep it was!! The roads in the reserve, aside from often being very steep, aren't exactly flat either, with huge rocks/divots making the escape all the trickier. At this point I should point out I’d forgotten to bring any sun cream out with me (one of many “idiot” moments I’ve had here so far). Upon meeting one of the owners of the reserve the previous day it had been pointed out to me that I was pretty pale and so should make sure I used plenty of sun cream; I laughed it off at the time, but after spending just half an hour in the blistering mid-day sun trying to free our vehicle from her predicament, I discovered there was much wisdom in what he had said!! Eventually we got back to camp about 3 hours later than planned, but we still weren’t done for the day at this point, having got word over the radio of a mysterious death…